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One day, I got curious about Nehemiah’s prayer. I searched an online Bible for the phrase: “great and awesome God.” It’s a phrase Nehemiah uses at the beginning of his confessional prayer, the prayer he prays for months. I discovered that he wasn’t original. The phrase had been used before.

“Why were you looking at my words?” he asked. He had been sitting in his chair in the corner of my office while I was searching.

I thought about it. “I’m not sure. Something about the phrase sounded familiar. For awhile I thought it was like ‘the great and powerful Oz’. But that wasn’t it. When I went looking, I found that Daniel started a prayer almost the same way. Did you know about his prayer when you were praying?”

“The prayer in what you call Daniel 9?” Nehemiah asked. He looked out the window. “It would have been so much easier for us to have chapter and verse numbers.^[1] We just memorized everything.”

“But did you memorize Daniel’s prayer?” I was persistent.

Nehemiah just looked at me.

“Here’s why I’m asking. Your prayer sounds very much like Daniel’s prayer. You are both calling out to ‘the great and awesome God.’ You both describe him as the God ‘who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments.’^[2] The exact same words. I want to know if  everyone talked to God that way. I want to know if that phrasing should be a formula for us. I want to know whether you and Daniel were part of a Jewish civil service prayer and Bible study group.”

Nehemiah smiled slightly. “Why do you ask that, in particular?”

For once I felt like a teacher when talking with Nehemiah. Or a forensic Bible student. “I realized that both you and Daniel were in positions of significant trust with foreign kings. Your book starts about 100 years after Daniel’s finishes, but we don’t know how many years passed between you. And then the appearance of Mordecai in a position of responsibility in the court of your king’s predecessor suggests that there were people a baton pass apart who served the king and followed God.^[3] Is it a spiritual support group for those who would otherwise feel alone in leadership?”

“I’m not going to say more than the story says,” Nehemiah replied eventually. “But Jeremiah told us very early in the exile to

seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.^[4]

“Daniel, Mordecai, and I took that instruction seriously. Serving the king well was obeying God. The same phrasing doesn’t have to mean that we were connected in the way that you suggest. However, it is a good model for praying which I probably heard from others, just as you pick up phrases that are helpful. I will give you this, just as I wasn’t the only one praying for Jerusalem in my time, Daniel wasn’t alone in his time.” Nehemiah smiled at me. “But you are missing much in Daniel’s prayer, and mine, if you stop with the wording of the first sentence. Look at the whole prayer.”

I looked. “You both talk to God about disobedience. You both include yourselves by saying ‘we’ but you point to your ancestors.”

“That’s a good start.” Nehemiah said.  “When talking to God about wrongdoing, it’s wise to not focus just on what ‘they’ have done. That feels like blaming. Both Daniel and I owned up to being part of the community that had sinned. What else do you see?”

I hesitated. “It seems like Daniel is focusing more on the people who did wrong. You are focusing more on wanting God to keep a promise.”

“Very good. That’s what happens when two people look at the same warnings and promises from two different places.”

I must have looked confused.

“You see how Daniel and I both refer to Moses in our prayer? We were both looking at what Moses said centuries before. We were both aware of what Solomon had prayed at the dedication of the temple.

“Both Moses and Solomon warned about what would happen when our people turned from God and both told us what God would do if we returned. When we turned, we would be scattered. Moses didn’t say ‘if’, he said ‘when’. Four hundred years apart, our people heard those warnings. And then God waited another four hundred years before allowing Jerusalem to be destroyed. Generation after generation, king after king, prophet after prophet. You can read for yourself that there were many, many opportunities. But eventually, God showed us that he was willing to have the city of God destroyed to show that he cared more about his people than his city.”

I held up my hand. “Can you wait a bit while I read those stories?” Nehemiah nodded and walked out. I heard him in the kitchen fixing coffee. I read the words of Moses in Deuteronomy.

All the nations will ask: “Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?” And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. They went off and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them.^[5]

I read the words of Solomon in 1 Kings:

and if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their enemies who took them captive, and pray to you toward the land you gave their ancestors, toward the city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your Name; then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause.^[6]

The warnings were clear. The promise was great. I was ready to talk again. And Nehemiah walked back in, carrying two mugs.

Nehemiah spoke first. “Daniel looked at those warnings and promises from Moses and Solomon. He read Jeremiah’s comment about a seventy-year exile and looked at the calendar. He did the math from his own trip into exile in 604 and realized that the seventy years could be completed in four or five years. He wanted to be sure that our people could go home as soon as possible. So Daniel was intent on letting God know that he, Daniel, knew how serious the sin had been. It was a very powerful time of confession. You know that feeling.”

I nodded.

“It’s important to understand, too, that Daniel had watched the sins of the kings and princes and ancestors. Daniel had been in Jerusalem; he had seen how awful the disobedience was. Daniel was praying as an old man who had spent a lifetime understanding the consequences of sinning against God.”

I nodded. “I love Daniel’s closing: ‘We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.'”^[7]

Nehemiah smiled. “And that’s what gave me such hope one hundred years later. God’s mercy had ended the exile. God’s mercy had allowed people to rebuild the temple.”

I interrupted. “But there was still the promise that Moses made, the other half of his message.”

“Exactly,” Nehemiah said. “That’s my focus. Moses said that if we turned back to God, he would bring us back from the distant nations. What could be more distant than Susa? So I was reminding God that I was praying and we were praying and it was time to go home.”

I leaned forward. “That’s what you meant by looking at the same story from two places. Moses and Solomon looked at the future and gave warnings and promises. Jeremiah wrote from the middle of the story and reminded the people that God was working out a plan. Daniel looked at the warnings and was convicted. You looked at the promises and were hopeful.”

Nehemiah nodded. “But all of us were looking at God. His words were the same for all of us. Our situations highlighted them differently and gave them greater dimension.”

He set his mug down. “So are you still worried about whether the words of my prayer were original? Or is it enough that I was faithful to a long thread of consistent conversation with God?”

I looked down. “Faithful is good.”

I looked up. He was gone.

So I tried it myself.

Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel.^[8]

“And me,” I said. “Please listen to me.”